Key Actors – Peopling the Neoliberal Economy
The project provides the first comprehensive theoretical and empirical investigation of how neoliberalism’s key actors have been constructed, how they relate to each other, and how they serve to legitimize our contemporary economic system.
The aim is to provide a new understanding of the neoliberal economic paradigm in Western societies and its resilience by offering a new theoretical perspective on political paradigms in an international perspective.
On the heels of the financial crash in 2008, many proclaimed the death of neoliberalism. In response to the revelations of widespread fraud, to a class of economists unable to predict the crash, and to governments unable or unwilling to do more than push the bill from banks to citizens, a large number of politicians, pundits, and scholars lined up to outline the contours of a post-neoliberal order. No such thing occurred. By and large, the measures taken, especially austerity measures, the political decisions not to prosecute the bankers, to tax the top heavier, or to enforce stronger measures of regulation, only strengthened the neoliberal policy agenda. How could an ideology vilified by so many persevere?
Notably, scholars in the field have provided few, if any, answers to this pressing question. This failure is linked, we argue, in part to the fact that they have refrained from analyzing the ideational framework within which the neoliberal economy is legitimized and rallies popular support. The aim of this project is to provide a better understanding of the neoliberal paradigm and its resilience in Western societies by offering a novel theoretical view of a core ideological element in upholding political orders. Our argument is that the success and endurance of the neoliberal economy can be understood by exploring the ways in which certain imaginary figures, what we label ‘key actors’, have been articulated, disseminated, and applied as sources of economic knowledge and role models of societal behaviour.
Our project shows how the neoliberal order has been peopled, and is sustained, by the following six key actors: the economist, the consumer, the entrepreneur, the bureaucrat, the investor, and the debtor. Devoting a chapter to each, we argue that by the last quarter of the twentieth century, these key actors were disseminated and universalized as role models and policy justifications in Western societies. They not only offer individuals attractive ideals of how to conduct their lives; they also provide governments, businesses and institutions with a vocabulary to name and explain their activities. In other words, key actors offer justifications for economic practices and a framework for making sense of decisions.
The argument of this project is that neoliberalism hinges on its key actors, and it aims to explore in detail, from an intellectual history perspective, the processes in which these key actors were constructed, disseminated, and implemented. As such, it offers a new perspective on the emergence, characteristics and persistence of the neoliberal political paradigm.
A wave of research conducted by historians, sociologists, and political theorists has illuminated the emergence and characteristics of various modes of contemporary internationalized free market economies that are often subsumed under the label of ‘neoliberalism’. In spite of their different approaches, most scholars in the field agree on a standard understanding of neoliberalism as the extension of market mechanisms to all spheres of social life, fostered and enforced by the state (and other political institutions). They also agree that neoliberalism has caused a large, complex, and multidimensional shift in thinking about and organizing of political economy, which pushes market-oriented principles of competition, freedom, and choice, rather than ideals of political democracy, economic equality, and public participation.
Still, neoliberalism is interpreted from many different angles. Marxists explain it as a deliberate political project aiming to restore the power of the capitalist class after years of decline in the post-war period. Foucauldians portray neoliberalism as a normative rationality that compels individuals to think and act according to principles of competition and economic calculation. A more network-oriented line of research understands neoliberalism as a network of scholars, intellectuals, and businessmen that has contributed to the global reshaping and diffusion of free-market thoughts through think tanks and institutions since the interwar era, with a focus on the so-called Mont Pelerin Society. These and other strands of research have not only contributed significantly to our understanding of neoliberal ideology and practice, but also provided various explanations for the triumphs of the neoliberal paradigm. Most importantly, they have pointed to the strong links established between the state and market, the work of think tanks, deep-rooted economic theories, and forces of globalization as key factors for its endurance.
However, these contributions have shortcomings. First, they offer few explanations for how neoliberalism is legitimized and sustained as an attractive political paradigm. Second, while scholars have offered single studies of, for example, the entrepreneur and the consumer, nobody has theorized or investigated how our contemporary political economy has been legitimized by a multiplicity of role models, or how these key actors relate to and conflict with each other. Thirdly, scholars often have a sociological focus on neoliberalism as a political economy, explaining the rise and dissemination of neoliberalism from within changes in the economy, most notably the financial crises of the welfare state and a subsequent financialization.
This project focuses more squarely on neoliberalism as a system of thought and on its trajectories within a battle of ideas. This is not to discount the political economy reading, but rather to supplement it. It is against this background that we aim to offer the first comprehensive and systematic account of neoliberalism’s key actors.
Economies are, of course, inhabited by real people going about their day-to-day business. However, to be established and to function, any social order arguably needs to be legitimized with reference to certain key actors deemed especially vital for society. We do not understand key actors as real individuals, but rather as an assemblage of ideas that promote specific ways to act by prescribing models for successful personal existence in a given society. In short, as imagined role models, key actors are ideational and normative constructions both describing and evaluating a set of activities. As such, they function as subjects of economic and political theory, legislation, regulation, social practices, moral values and cultural images. They are produced at various levels and in different spheres and provide meaning and coherence to our societal practices, collectively and individually, as well as paths of advisable action. They tell stories of how you can succeed in society, by aligning individual pursuits with ideas of the common good as defined by the virtues and rules of the community.
By no means exclusive to the neoliberal age, all societal orders in human history have been characterized by distinct key actors and associated imaginaries; think of king, feudal lord and peasant in medieval and early-modern times. Another, more recent example, the predecessor to our time, the so-called ‘the Golden Age of Capitalism’, spanning from around 1945 to the early 1970s, relied to a great extent on ideas of the worker and the capitalist – and of the opposition between these two personas – in industrial society – as well as of the housewife in the home (somewhat independently of whether women actually worked solely at home or in a wage-job also). It was institutionalized by a coalition of political forces, who accepted the state as a body representing the public interest and encouraged government regulation of the market and extensive social welfare programs, based on the belief that creating the good society for the entire population, including workers, requires controlling the dynamics of capitalism and the actions of capitalists. Capitalism, so it was assumed, was capable of generating economic growth, innovation and freedom. But if unchecked, profit-focused and self-interested capitalists would create a society characterized by unfair distribution of wealth and power. Workers, on the other hand, not only needed collective institutions, such as unions, to protect their interests, but also cultural institutions, such as leisure clubs, to educate them socially and culturally and prime them as productive and democratic agents of modern society. Both sides of the capital-labour divide understood capitalist and worker as the key actors peopling and deciding the social division of profits, power and status. The labour movement, no less than the state, the capitalist class, and scholars such as sociologists, political scientists, and economists, was instrumental in deepening an understanding of the worker as an identifiable political, cultural, and deeply personal stereotype in which one could make sense of life as an individual and as a collective.
Today, we rarely hear of workers or capitalists. The frontline between the two antagonists seems, in the Western world, to have vanished, along with its imaginary of the need for government regulation, collective institutions and taming the unfair dynamics of capitalism. In the age of neoliberalism, other key actors and imaginaries have taken over the place once dominated by worker and capitalist. These must be scrutinized in order to grasp how this particular market order is framed, institutionalized and legitimized.
To be sure, we are not the first to argue that market orders always frame and institutionalize personified ideals for successful existence (i.e. ideals that are vital to create or uphold these orders). Perhaps most famously, Michel Foucault argued that neoliberalism produces a particular subjectivity in which individuals are constituted as subjects of “human capital” and compelled to think and act according to principles of competition and economic calculation. More specifically, in Foucault’s interpretation, neoliberalism encourages human beings to transform their private and social lives according to ideals of entrepreneurship based on the model of the firm. In Foucault’s own words: “Homo economicus is an entrepreneur, an entrepreneur of himself.” According to this perspective, which has become widespread in research on neoliberalism, the neoliberal paradigm is characterized by the ambition to disseminate – into all social and cultural spheres – a competition ethos aiming to transform us into “entrepreneurs of the self” engaged in self-interested conduct as personal investment.
Foucauldian studies have been vital in debunking the widespread idea that neoliberalism merely produces the version of ‘economic man’ depicted in economic models. This agent has consistent and stable preferences; is entirely forward-looking, and pursues only her/his own self-interest. When presented with options, economic man rationally chooses the alternative with the highest expected personal utility. Much critique of neoliberalism has focused on the alleged use of the model of economic man to reshape human beings (and feminist critique has revealed the gender norms inherent in the allegedly abstract model of economic man, as post-colonial critiques have exposed its ethnocentric biases), modelling the world according to theory and thereby sacrificing the diversity of humanity to the mono-vision of economic science. But this, we argue, is not how neoliberalism populates the world. Rather it is through more substantial figures, prescribing more specific courses of action, located closer to decision-making processes and imbued with deeper cultural and moral values than the abstract self-interest pursuing economic man.
We thus expand the analytical perspectives outlined by Foucault on how market orders construct more substantial and personified models for successful existence, such as the entrepreneur. However, we depart from Foucault in two important ways. First, in contrast to Foucault’s focus on a single persona, we want to show that neoliberal society is peopled by a multiplicity of key actors, endowed with different characteristics, and to uncover how these actors relate to and conflict with each other. Neoliberalism not only offers (or forces) people to become entrepreneurs, but also and oftentimes simultaneously, for example, consumers, investors and debtors. As an array of different identities, these key actors promise guidance, but also correction, for how to design and live a profitable life. Some serve as ideals, others as cautionary tales. The consumer is supposed to dictate economic production and drive political activity through exercising free choice on the market. The entrepreneur is believed to develop the economy through ‘creative destruction’ causing constant fluctuations and transformations. The debtor needs to redeem and discipline her-/himself to become economically sound and accepted within the free market order. Associated with repetitive, rule-bound and predictable work, which can pose obstacles to ‘creative destruction’, the bureaucrat should learn to be less commanding, rigid and inflexible in her/his conduct.
Our approach merges insights from Foucault and the German historian Reinhart Koselleck to build a novel intellectual history approach to the study of neoliberalism. With Foucault, we explore the rationality of neoliberalism through a focus on its ambition to produce particular subjectivities – what we call key actors. With Koselleck, we apply a conceptual analysis to these key actors of neoliberalism as a way to understand the making of this particular political paradigm. We apply the Koselleckian idea of a key concept unto our key actors. As the key concepts, they are omnipresent and summarize a plurality of experiences and expectations in one concept, often layering different meanings in a concept that can be invoked at different times and in different contexts of social-political discourse, planning and policy-making. But as personified actors rather than concepts they are open to other type of imaginaries and embody more distinct plans of action. They prescribe life choices, policy decisions, and aspirations more directly and with a stronger appeal to individual action than a key concept does.
Altogether, our approach aims at a new intellectual history of neoliberalism that examines the meanings and identities neoliberals have attributed to the economist, the entrepreneur, the consumer, the bureaucrat, the investor, and the debtor; the contexts in which these key actors were developed; and the roles they have played in political transformations up to and including present time.
Researchers
Internal researchers
| Name | Title | Phone | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jensen, Jacob | Teaching Associate Professor | ||
| Olsen, Niklas | Professor | +4551299676 |
Funding
Key Actors – Peopling the Neoliberal Economy is funded by Danmarks Frie Forskningsfond
Period: September 2019 - August 2021
PI: Niklas Olsen
External members
| Name | Title | Institution |
|---|---|---|
| Mikkel Thorup | Professor | Department of Philosophy and History of Ideas, Aarhus University |